Leica M8 on Safari

[mugent]

I'm somewhat embarrased at your praise. I do think my biggest downfall is composure. Remember too that you are seeing the very best of something in the order of 700 photos taken. And that these photos are then adjusted in Lightroom.

There were plenty of duds / out of focus shots / blurred etc. One big lesson I learned with the M8 is that for objects at distance - any hand movement / shutter vibration is amplified by that distance!

It's normal to have duds, the best photographers in the world will probably still put most of the photos in the trash, particularly with digital where we focus bracket, exposure bracket, and generally take far more photos than we would with film. Nothing wrong with a bit of post processing either in my opinion, films like Velvia used to give you punchy colors automatically, now we dial it in, it's no different.

MT

 

[jaapv]

Plenty of long lenses available for M cameras. Just buy a Visoflex iii.
Excellent safari shots. You have joined a very small niche within a niche. Welcome to the select club 😉

 

[Stephen G]

Very cool stuff.
#4 & #6 especially

If any advice, I'd say to do some reading/playing around with B&W conversion. That is an art in itself, and it can initially hard to get that "pop" out of it.
What software are you using for the B&W?

50lux pre-asph is a great lens, isnt it?
its my #1 fave on m8 as well.

 

[The Meaness]

Wow. I can't get past the FL you used. Really impressive feat, and great results.

The only thing that stands out to me is the zebra shot, while powerful, maybe has a little too much 'pop' - it looks like some of the highlights are missing.

I think humility and experience are your best teachers - you are already better than you seem to think! Thanks for sharing this!

 

[Scheelings]

Very cool stuff.
#4 & #6 especially

If any advice, I'd say to do some reading/playing around with B&W conversion. That is an art in itself, and it can initially hard to get that "pop" out of it.
What software are you using for the B&W?

50lux pre-asph is a great lens, isnt it?
its my #1 fave on m8 as well.

Some of the B&W I did in Lightroom 3 and some using SilverFX pro. I don't actually think you need to get silver fx because its just the convenience of having lots of pre-set's.

In lightroom what I normally do is to completely desaturate the photo of colour - but what this does is also remove a significant amount of contrast - so then I bump up the contrast - and if the image was spot on with focus - I generally increase sharpness as well - otherwise - if its a bit soft - I reduce sharpness - its a different look.

I would say that bumping up the sharpness gives the photo more 3D pop. Then I sometimes play around with a few other settings - sometimes I use 'fill light' to bring up some shadow detail but also - increasing the blacks can hide unnecessary detail that detracts from the image you are trying to get across.

I'd recommend playing with all of these settings to understand how it can change the mood of an image. Obviously shooting in Raw enables a greater degree of flexibility.

As for the 50mm pre-ASPH - sometimes the bokkeh is weird. Same with my Noctilux. When I get to Malaysia (safe country), I'm going to start using it on film and see if its worth keeping. I spent today looking at the noctilux thread and was blown away by some of the results.

 

[Rob-F]

Great shots! My reaction was a lot like Keith's: "how did he do this with an M8?" In fact I wondered at first if you meant R8.

The only criticism I can offer is that I though the contrast seemed a bit hard on the B&W shots. I wonder if, when it comes to contrast enhancement, if the "less is more" rule might apply here.

 

[Scheelings]

Great shots! My reaction was a lot like Keith's: "how did he do this with an M8?" In fact I wondered at first if you meant R8.

The only criticism I can offer is that I though the contrast seemed a bit hard on the B&W shots. I wonder if, when it comes to contrast enhancement, if the "less is more" rule might apply here.

Hi Rob, thanks for the compliment. Contrast is something I like to experiment with - but I'm not sure what the hard & fast rules are with it. To be honest I prefer a higher contrast than what Leica lenses seem to produce (mine were all pre-asph at that time) - and they also seem less colour saturated compared to their Zeiss equivalents.

Perhaps I'm pushing up the contrast too high - and I should stick to using pre-sets on Silver FX pro.